After the events of this week, I wish all of you never to need to pay for a funeral, unless you're well off. It cost roughly $12,000 for the funeral and burial. However, insurance only took care of about 80%, the other 20% had to be paid out of pocket (we were lucky this place even accepted insurance money). One aunt on each side of the family offered to write checks to cover that amount as a loan. I've got until October 31st to pay $1,254.30 off.

While this is going on, my sister is on food stamps until she can get back on her feet with a job, while also dealing with trying to sell some 5 vehicles off to help lessen the debt as well as car insurance costs, the power bill, and the late mortgage (my dad's house is in risk of foreclosure by the 15th). She's also selling off a bunch of other things like tools, etc.

In short, my dad's death has gutted the house at the very least.

I hate to beg for charity, but if you'd like to help by contributing any amount of money it would be GREATLY appreciated by the entire family. I realize there're a lot of fly-by-night spam posts of this sort, that you guys receive in your e-mail inbox, but I'd like to think my longterm presence and general lack of douchebaggery will hopefully allow you to take my situation as genuine.

Also, I had to change the birthyear in the subject because I was wrong; my dad was only 50 years old when he left us, not 57. The funeral and first viewing of the casket were so draining on all of the family. Seeing the photo my grandparents had found of him pre-chemo and then looking at the body of my father in the casket still gets me choked up because the casual onlooker would say they weren't the same man.

A lot of the co-workers my dad had at Delta Airlines and Southern Auto Electric showed up at the viewing and the funeral (scheduling their days so they could see him for at least one or the other). The co-workers my dad had in the mechanic shop at Delta are looking into having the name changed in honor of my father.

If you'd like to help in any way, just send me a PM asking what can be done and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.